Once Bitten, Twice Fly
by Literary Ditch
Summary: Today doesn't look like being a good one for Ann Holm: having been a vampire less than twenty-four hours, she's already dead...
1. Chapter 1

The great A'Tuin is probably, by his (or her) reckoning, just your ordinary turtle, migrating from A to B. Whether even he (or she) knows where either of these points lies is a mystery.

Ephebian scholar Hipposethes once theorised that point A was a huge explosion and that A'Tuin has merely been unsuccessful in all attempts to stop since then. He does, however, have a nice comfy room to himself and as much foil as he wants for making hats, although even he doesn't know why.

Around it, the sun and moon orbit slowly, occasionally giving one of the four great elephants need to move its leg or else suffer the universe's worst sunburn. The sun's light starts its life with ambition, but realises the lack of point on entering the Disk's magic-laden atmosphere, and slows to a comparative jog, tracing slowly across the surface so that the Hubward regions on the opposite side of the disk to its rising hardly notice it rising over the peak of Cori Celeste, home and alleged casino of the Gods before it's already sinking below the rim.

Right now, the same sun was staring at Ankh-Morpork, which would make it feel glad it had no eyes, had it a mind to not go with them.

Ankh-Morpork may be the only place in the known multiverse where garden centres are tolerated arms dealers: they sell pitch forks, hedge-trimmers, scythes, other sharp implements, you see, which seem innocent enough until you look back on the city: geographers say Ankh-Morpork is built on loam, based solely on the circumstantial evidence that the surrounding countryside is; Ankh-Morpork is, however, built on more Ankh-Morpork, which is not known for its fertility (in the soil, anyway). Moss thinks twice before braving the gaps between cobbles and _even then _decides against it.

The rains of the night before had left lines of water in the cobbles and puddles on the surface of the river which were best not to think about, but it had cleared the sky for a bright, clear Grune day, where it could be guaranteed the trolls would be literally too hot to think of waking up and vampires would batten down the hatches and stay in.

Or they should, anyway.

Looking down on the pile of dust and fabric, off-duty Sergeant Angua, city Watchdog with a nose for crime, trouble and anything else pungent enough to puncture the fog of the Ankh, realised why they said in the Rimward lands that nature abhors a vampire.

She carefully scooped the ashes into a straight-edged agriculture-oriented polearm, until recent law amendments known as the spade and used as the axe, picked the clothes up, careful to leave them in the same arrangement as they had fallen and sought a shaded alley.

As she laid them down, a shadow detached itself from its surrounding brethren, another one who thought black was the best thing for hiding in shadows, rather than thinking logically and realising that being the same colour as what the shadow fell on would make you _the same shade of black_. Nevertheless, the ease at which this one had managed to blend in despite this lack of common sense filed it under the category Assassin, and its gait filed it under Turning In For The Day. Angua stepped not quite into his way.

"Got a knife?"

The assassin took this question like most people would respond to such questions as "Excuse me, do you have a head?", held out an arm and made a tiny movement somewhere in the shoulder area. A thin needle shot out, the tool known as the Golden Handshake, as, like its business counterpart, it meant "Goodbye, I doubt we'll meet again; nothing personal, but it's more economically viable to let you go." The assassin looked slightly puzzled, half-shrugged again and it clicked back and was replaced by a thin blade. He held it up to his nose and, presumably, sniffed, but with professional inaudibility.

"Yep, clean." he said, lowering it again with the curiosity of someone standing before a conjurer in the knowledge that there's about to be a trick, but will be damned if they know what it's going to be. Angua held out her own hand and moved one index finger across the tip of the opposite one.

"Just across there, thanks."

The assassin blinked.

Quite a few times.

He looked from Angua's hand to her face.

To his knife.

To her face.

To her hand.

Over his shoulder.

To her hand.

"Anytime today, please," Angua sighed slowly. The assassin drew the blade's tip across her finger then darted back as if expecting an explosion. She winced a little and, with exaggerated emphasis, did not explode.

"Thanks." He didn't move, but stood watching her hand, counting under his breath.

"You can go now." Having passed three, five and ten, satisfied that narrative causality wouldn't be so inventive as to allow anything interesting at any time past these points, he continued to walk out of the alley.

Had he known that at no multiple of three or five seconds after his departure Angua had let a drop of blood land on the pile of dust and cloth in the alley and it had erupted into the shape of a pale woman who hadn't yet grasped the skill of picking up the clothes as she ascended through them, he'd probably have kicked himself. Being armed with poison-tipped heel blades, this would have been silly and quite terminal move, so, probably, it's for the best.


	2. Chapter 2

Ann staggered backwards with the sudden feeling of being hit in the chin with a red-hot snowball, struggling to focus her mind and senses: the last thing she remembered was the sudden sensation of burning, then, next she knew, she was standing (or at least attempting toward those ends) in a thin alley off Treacle Mine Road in-front of an indefinite number of taller, blonde women with tired expressions pinching their index fingers. Slowly, they focused into one, who sighed.

"Must be pretty desperate to come out on a day like this. What couldn't wait six hours?"

"What?" Ann clutched at her head, hoping that, by holding it still, the rest of her body would follow suit. It nearly worked.

The woman in-front of her took a small medicine bottle out of her pocket and put her finger, which Ann could now see was bleeding, to its open neck, seemingly oblivious to the interjection.

"You could at least take a parasol, they're coming back into fashion now - and no-one'll notice if it's really just an umbrella." With a tiny amount of blood in the bottom of the bottle, she held it out to Ann. "Most find it useful to carry a card in case they spontaneously disintegrate." she gave a slight, sarcastic laugh. "That's Ankh-Morpork for you: people can't see you need help until you write SOS on the back of a blank cheque."

Ann just stared at the little bottle outstretched to her. "What… what are you on about?"

"Sunlight," Angua chimed promptly. "Set to be the brightest day of the year but you're still outside without protection or a backup plan." Ann's mind, leaving the bigger gaps in her understanding until she could get a proper run-up, jumped the small hurdles first.

"Why do you even _have _an empty medicine bottle on you?" she slurred.

"Time of the month." Although the rushed response was, in essence, true, the bottle had previously contained dog worm medicine: once a month, Angua couldn't be certain what what she'd eaten had eaten: the rest of the month was easy: water, air, light, the usual, but raw meat was less predictable.

Something about the woman before Angua was, she knew, beautiful: no single feature, not even all of them put together: she had prominent cheekbones and her matted brown hair flowed little further than collarbones you could eat your dinner off; she had wide, currently confused eyes beneath sharp brows and a thin nose and sharp chin, below which Angua felt herself having to hold her focus up from. She was, for the most part, the kind of slim build you get by not being able to afford any other kind, with skin, although quite dark and pink by vampiric standards, still pale, and that was where the idea of beauty came from: nothing about her was beautiful, in the same way Daniellarina Pouter's work wasn't artistic: being there made it obviously priceless, abstract essence of a genius, even if outside it was obviously the worthless, unidentifiable chromatic seizures of a lunatic. Somehow, vampires, whatever their appearance, were beautiful, making them possibly the only people which can be beautiful as angels and ugly as sin at the same time. Granted, no matter how hard Angua fought the Influence, Ann was not as ugly as sin, but would, at highest accolade, be granted striking, although her current bemusement held her face in such a shape as to barely achieve that.

She took the bottle gingerly, holding it to eye level. Her quizzicality seemed to make no sense.

"I take it you've never died before?"

"No!" This was the first time her voice bore anything with semblance to certainty and she nearly dropped the bottle out of shock; "And I don't intend to start until I'm…" the certainty faltered; "I'm… I die!"

Now it was Angua's turn to be confused: faced with a vampire without even the concept of multiple deaths and resurrections or even, apparently, sunlight, she felt the need to investigate - a potentially dangerous habit she'd picked up over her years in the watch. She fished in a pocket and brought out a silver pendant in the shape of a tortoise with a man spread-eagled across its back, given to her by Constable Visit as a blessing-cum-bribe. It worked, in an odd way.

To Ann, it was as if a lit match had been held next to each eye, blinding pain searing into her head. She stumbled back to the wall, eyes clamped shut.

"What the hell just happened?"

_Ah…_ "The Holy Tortoise of Om, symbol of Omnianism. You have theoiconophobia."

"I know what it is - the turtle, that is… what was the last bit?"

"Theoiconophobia. Repulsion of religious imagery."

"What? Wait… why do you have the Holy Tortoise of Om?" Ann murmured, laden with suspicion.

"It protects me."

_Oh Gods, please no… _"From what?"

"Omnian evangelists."

"… Ah." She breathed a visible sigh of relief.

Dropping the pendant back in its pocket, Angua raised an eyebrow. "You really don't get what's going on here, do you?"

"Not as such, no."

"Put it this way: first I saw of you was a pile of dust. That helpful?"

"I doubt your mind could comprehend how unhelpful that was, because mine can't."

Angua sighed. "Are you familiar with vampirism?"

"Not very."

"You are now."

This was just the run up her mind needed to bridge the mental gap, on the other side of which it hit a brick wall.

"… Oh…"

"That all?"

"… Yep."

In the awkward silence that followed, Ann stared at the bottle of blood in her hand.

"What's this for?" She eventually summoned up.

"When you disintegrate."

"Oh…"

"It breaks and brings you back."

"Oh…"

The silence returned.

"Where were you heading?"

"The Treacle Mine Road watch house," Ann replied, glad of the conversation to break the silence. "I got burgled last night."

"No card?"

"No, it wasn't a guild job: windows smashed, everything rifled through - not as if they wanted to find anything, it just looks like someone went mad all over the place."

"Well, I'd wait until night before trying to go anywhere. Can you get back home without being in the sun too long?"

Ann took in her location; she knew her way around the alleyways from childhood games, so was quite confident.

"Easily. Thanks - see you around?"

"Sure – go to the watch house at Pseudopolis Yard, though, not Treacle Mine." Ann began to walk away, and got surprisingly far before Angua noticed something missing. She spluttered a little, swallowed and called out after the retreating figure.

"'Scuse me?" Ann turned to face her again. Angua lifted a pile of cloth to eye level.

"These might be useful." Ann looked at them, then at Angua's face. Angua looked down pointedly. Ann's eyes followed hers down, then back up suddenly, with what would have been a blush had species not got in the way.

It would be wrong to describe her movements as a blur: anyone can move so fast as to be a blur: wave your hand in-front of your face and try to focus on it; Ann merely ceased to be standing undignified in a thankfully empty alley and, a split second later, began to be once more, with the only clue to an intermittent stage being the movement of Ann to Angua and the clothes from Angua's hand to Ann. Still nearly blushing, she ran off down the alley.


	3. Chapter 3

Ann spent the rest of the time before the sun shuffled under the far horizon trying to make herself look human: she got hold of some of her mother's old makeup which she had previously detested as, on her mother, it conjured beetroot cravings, but on skin gradually fading to white merely manifested as healthy. Once she'd satisfied herself that no visible skin was blue-white - with the logic that if the same should happen as did that afternoon, no amount of blusher would fool anyone as to her species, so she only need bother with visible skin - she set off into the muggy darkness for Pon's Bridge with six hours of sleep loss piling up behind her eyelids. Living in Ham Alley, only a few minutes' walk from Treacle Mine station, she hoped the woman from earlier had a good reason for sending her all the way to Pseudopolis Yard.

The heat of the day had lifted a thick, pungent smog off the surface of the Ankh, which clung like cobwebs and lifted the paint off the riverside shop signs. Ann held her breath as she darted through the translucent smorgasbord that flooded the ends of the bridge and swirled around her in thick brown whorls; she didn't stop running until the blue light of the watch house was in her sights.

Despite this, she pushed open the door not even short of breath, but only to be greeted by ten feet by six feet of hazy-eyed troll.

"AWRIGHT OWN YOU WE UP IT WERE WHAT KNOW DONE IT!"

"Sit down, sergeant, no-one's suspected of anything."

Detritus looked around to the weary man behind the desk, who was looking up from a mound of paperwork, watching the troll closely.

No-one seemed to notice that Detritus had become relatively intelligent by troll standards: he was possibly on a par with even the formidable Chrysoprase at the same temperature; despite this, even other trolls held Detritus's perceived intellect in low regards, although would be unlikely to put it that way. Sadly, it was a very warm night, which was having detrimental effects on his silicate brain. The poor sod had stuck everything on autopilot and hoped for the best.

"SIR!" he bellowed, stumbling to attention for no apparent reason and clouting his helmet with a salute the size of a decent doorway; "SERGEAN' DETRI'US, REPORTIN' F–"

"Shut up, Detritus, you're already on duty," the man at the desk snapped with his face in his hands, covering his eyes. He looked up despairingly, not at either of the room's other occupants but bypassing them on the way to the ceiling, where a simple chandelier lit a long scar traced through one eye. "Just sit quietly in a corner somewhere," he conceded.

Detritus lumbered off, still unknowingly holding his salute and fell over backwards.

It was a very hot night, Ann had to admit.

She turned back to the man at the desk, the picture of overworked action-deficit and he looked down to meet her eyes.

"You're the girl reporting an unlicensed burglary, right?"

Ann blinked the shock away, uncertain of how to come back to that. She settled with "Yeah, that's me."

He got up and walked into a small office behind the desk and brought out a form. Just as he was about to hand it over, he looked more closely at it, withdrew it and brought out a second, similar form and placed it in front of her.

"Different forms for vampires," he explained.

Ann stammered flabbergastedly as she waited for her tongue to get a foothold on her voice.

"What – why? How do you know? Wh… uh?" she dwindled into silence under his placid face.

"More space for your name. As for the second one…" he tapped his chin as if to indicate she'd spilt something on her lip. She reached up and felt the tip of a canine tooth sticking out over her bottom lip. She clapped the lip back over them and threw her hands down stubbornly, ignoring the fact she could feel them trying to push their way out of her mouth again.

"Name?" he sighed, ignoring the little sideplay.

"Ann. Ann Holm."

"No titles or middle names?"

"Alright: _Miss_ Ann Holm. And yes: Yvonne."

She watched him write it down and double-take. He looked up at her with a face so straight it can only have been hiding a laugh.

"Ann Yvonne Holm?" he said hurriedly before the laugh could break out.

"Yes," she snapped. It didn't have the desired effect. "_Miss_ Ann Yvonne Holm. Is there a problem?"

"Address of burglary?" He coughed, moving on quickly.

"Above the old butchers' store in Ham Alley." Ann had been reluctant to move into the room, partly for its location on the edge of the Shades but mostly because of its history: the butchers' shop had been closed on account of selling cleanly-shaved human meat prepared in the barber's salon of Odd-Eyed Stevie above the shop, which kept running curiously long without anyone becoming suspicious of the fact no-one left the salon. The story had been enough to turn her off meat for life but also enough to get the room quite cheap, even by Shades standards, which is difficult to do without the buyer making a profit.

"Time of burglary?"

"About twenty-four hours ago. I was asleep."

He stopped writing suddenly. "Then how do you know you were burgled and you didn't just lose something?"

"Because when I woke up everything was strewn all over the place and my bedroom window was broken."

"You slept through that?!"

"Either that or I have a poor memory."

"Broken which way?" he asked quickly.

"What?"

"Was it an entrance or exit? Your window," he added as confirmation.

"Exit, I think. If it was broken inwards, all the glass has been covered up with debris, but there was some in the street."

Vimes sat back thoughtfully. Either the glass had, indeed, been covered up or the intruder had got in with professional ease but broken out through a first-floor window.

"Was your door unlocked this morning?"

Ann shut her eyes in recollection. _No, it was definitely locked, I unlocked it. But there's something wrong…_

_Ah._

"No, but the key was in it. I never leave the key in the lock."

Vimes put the end of his pencil between his teeth, then leaned back in his seat, staring at the middle-distance and tapping the pencil on his temple. He rocked back onto two of the chair's legs and swung a foot onto the desk, clad in a boot so full of holes it was practically a sandal and soles so thin you could make out the shape of his foot through it. He swung himself back into normal sitting position so quickly Ann jumped back – much further than she'd expected. Ignoring the poor figure now swinging on the chandelier, he folded the sheet into thirds and put the pencil down.

"Angua?" The call was barely worthy of a question mark. Not long after, the woman Ann had met earlier that day emerged, untucking her hair from her collar with one arm as she did so, the other arm on her helmet. Ann dropped from the chandelier in surprise and furthered the surprise by landing on her feet. Angua, looking at the form Vimes had handed her, didn't see; Vimes just chose to ignore. Angua pocketed the form and began to walk over to Ann.

"Over the investigation you can't stay in your home – it's officially a crime scene, now. I'll find somewhere to put you up."

"Before I go," Ann cut in, "can I see your pathologist?"

Angua raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I need to see a doctor and I don't trust the Guild ones."

"Oh, he's not a doctor," Vimes laughed, not looking up from his work.

Ann blinked. "Does he have any medical qualifications?"

"Not as such," Angua admitted.

"Who is he?"

"Corporal Igor."

_Ah._

Above medical students are pharmaceutical workers. Then there are doctors. Then there are professors; witches and surgeons and nurses fit somewhere in around the area, but Ann knew not where, coming well below whatever the first step was. _Then_ there were Igors, a good three steps over whatever you cared to name. She relaxed and smiled.

"Yes, thergeant?" Angua winced, screwed up her face and went rigid as if ice had just been put down her back.

"… _Pleasedon'tdothatagainIgor_…" she mumbled from the corner of her mouth. She stepped aside, revealing a person who seemed too human to be an Igor: he was standing straight, for one thing, had neat stitches where they were visible and everything seemed to… fit. Ann had seen Igors before: not so much individuals as collages of other people. Sure, they could stitch other people up perfectly, a new arm as good as the old one, but they always seemed to settle for second- or third-best for themselves. She'd even heard him drop a Th!

"Thorry, sergeant." She saw him curse himself over that one. He looked up to her, and patriotic duty dawned on his face.

He half-collapsed into the more familiar limp, grinned sheepishly and beckoned her toward the laboratory.

"Right thith way, mithtreth, jutht down thith corridor…" His voice had become something between a cackle and a death rattle, and he dragged one leg behind him, swinging one arm exaggeratedly and out of rhythm with his walk, beckoning with the index finger on the other hand.

Angua and Vimes caught each other's eyes and fought to stifle laughs.

"Ever see him like that around Sally?" the commander mused, returning to his paperwork.

* * * * *

"You requethted my humble athithtanthe, mithtreth?" Ann was beginning to wish she'd listened to Angua's suggestion of an umbrella; you could almost accurately reconstruct the last few conversations in the room from the damp flecks on the walls and floor.

For an Igor's lab, it was disappointingly well lit, even after he'd limped in ahead of her and turned most of the lights down.

"Salamander lights just don't flicker like candles," Ann thought aloud, absent-mindedly.

"Interethtingly enough, my great Uncle Igor onthe ecthperimented with induthing thiethureth in thalamanderth to thee if it affected biothaumiluminethenthe," Igor sprayed, "and found it did abtholutely thod all."

"Inducing what?"

"Thiethureth – you know: thpathmth. Fitth." By the end of this, Ann thought, I'm going to need a bath.

Which is odd, a second part thought, because I've just had a shower.

The only concessions the room had to offer toward the mental image of an Igor's domain were odd jars of organs and appendages dotted around the room. Ann could have sworn a hand in a jar waved at her…

"He meant well – wathn't keen on moving with the timeth but liked to thee the timeth moving with uth. Lovely perthon – alwayth had a hand to lend – literally and figuratively – and a kind heart." Igor thumbed across the room. "It wath hith grandfather'th before him – it'th over there if you want to thee." The jar in question thumped quietly to itself.

"How's it still beating?"

"Whithkey. Don't try it with liverth."

"Wasn't planning on." They stood in awkward silence for a while, until Igor suddenly breathed in with the sound of a rusty saw being drawn through wood.

"What wath it you withed to thee me about, mithtreth?"

"Ah, yes," Ann started; "Is there such thing as a cure for vampirism?"

Igor's smile slowly fell as the notion dug into him, and he sagged in such a way as to appear normal once more.

"I thud bloody well hope not!" he mumbled, crestfallen. "You know what the Patrithian thayth: 'Thi non confectuth, non refithiat'," he said.

"I never learned any Latatian."

"Good grief…" Igor muttered under his breath. "It meanth, broadly thpeaking 'If it ain't broke, don't ficth it'."

"'But how many of us ain't broke?'" Ann returned; "'How many of us ain't died a thousand broken-hearted lives?'"

"If it'th the dying you're worried about, it happens to the betht of 'em; dunno about broken-hearted, though: punctured, yeth, but not often broken, and rarely even that: no-one 'round here'th got thtaketh nowadayth – too cothmopolitain."

"It's a saying from the Chalk," Ann sighed.

"Well, what would they know? There'th no vampireth up there," Igor mused, greatly missing the point.

"Never mind." She walked out, leaving Igor to sulk in the sterile pseudo-gloom of the lab.


	4. Chapter 4

Ann emerged into the foyer of the watch house unaccompanied. Angua stood up from her seat by the front desk and made for her briskly, causing her to stop and face her. Ann spoke before Angua could get a word in.

"Why didn't you say you were with the watch?"

Angua was taken aback and left speechless.

"I could have told you everything and got it sorted then and there!"

"You could," Angua conceded, getting a disgruntled grip on her tongue, "but then you wouldn't have made it home before the sun was shining along the back-alleys and then what? You'd have to wait for it to go down again before the blood would work," she added as a subtle reminder of how much help she'd already been.

"Oh… sorry…" Ann looked down foolishly to where she assumed her feet lay.

"No worries," Angua smiled brightly. "I've found you a place in Warder Street - it's the closest place I can find to here. It's not great, but it's only whilst we process your place." Ann nodded, but her eyes slowly drew past Angua to the door, through which an empty watch uniform was entering.

A face made of assorted leftovers glued together with spots stuck out from under the helmet.

"_Hide me! Hide me!_" Ann attempted to stay behind the sergeant as she turned to see what the fuss was about. The abomination was carrying a small cylinder toward Vimes

"Oh, that's just -"

"I know Nobby," Ann hissed, "that's the problem!"

"Ah."

"Hullo, Ann," Nobby called, barely looking up. "Buggy jus' got this from Downspout, sir. Completely incidentally, we're one carrier pigeon down." He waited to hear the news out of professional curiosity (the profession being Eavesdropper), paying Ann so little attention she sidestepped into view out of defiance.

"I'll see your Warder Street apartment and raise you one," Vimes called. "Cosy little place this end of Salis Street goin' beggin', so I've got it rent-free for the course of the investigation."

"Oh… Thank you…" There wasn't much else could be said: being put up in Salis as a substitute for a poky apartment on the outskirts of the shades was like someone saying "Can I borrow your pencil? You can use this solid gold pen whilst I do" - you don't say "that's too much to ask of you" or anything humble like that, they might feel offended or, worse, take you seriously.

"No problem. Nobby?"

"Sir?"

"Take her to this address, please." He handed over the paper cylinder and it seemed to yellow as Nobby took it.

_Oh bugger…_

* * * * *

As they left, Angua turned proudly to congratulate her commander.

"Excellent show of self-control there." Angua's mouth hung open a while in numb shock: yes, that was what she'd meant to say, pretty much word-for-word; no, it hadn't been her voice saying it or, if it had, she was beginning to question whether that last night really was just a chicken.

She caught up with events again; "What do you mean?" she spluttered, taken aback.

"I remember how you and Sally acted when she first turned up, but you just treat Ann as your average civilian." Or how you would treat them if you genuinely thought they were innocent, he added to himself, which is a generally short-lived habit for a copper, with the exception of Carrot.

"She's not like other vampires," Angua replied; "she doesn't try to fit in with vampire or human stereotypes, she just… _is_ human." She paused. "With bigger teeth." She paused again. "And bigger… but that's not vampiric. And, actually," she retorted, "I was going to say exactly the same to you."

"Eh?"

"Not once did you look like you wanted to behead her."

He laughed. "Like you said: she's different. Not above herself. She looked uneasy when Igor went all servical - "

"Servile," Angua corrected hastily, blushing slightly.

"Servile, whatever," he waved a hand dismissively. "Plus, you said she seemed new to the job."

"Very, sir."

"You know what that makes her, don't you?" He was grinning darkly.

"Morning-fodder, sir?" Angua suggested.

"The _victim_ of a vampire," Vimes grinned triumphantly, ignoring the interjection.

"Ah." Vimes went back to his paperwork but something was still bothering Angua. "I've been trying to get a place booked up since this afternoon and you managed to get an upmarket Salis property in fifteen minutes?" Her voice was heavy with suspicious admiration.

"Five," he corrected. "It took them ten to get the pigeon back to me via Downspout and Swires."

"How many strings did you have to pull for that, then?"

He gave her a look which said, simply, _I _am_ the string._ Right now, the owners would have been dreading life being made "considerably less easy", had the message not confirmed his request and, in a city in which the most innocent person is the youngest baby only due to lack of time (except in some families, where being innocent-born is treated as still-born without the grief) "considerably" became "immensely" quickly.

There was a disturbing clicking noise as Reg Shoe, posthumous constable, lurched into the room and headed for the two with purpose. His armour, it seemed, served the sole purpose of, during any fights for which it seemed designed, holding him in vague organisation until it was over and he could get the sewing kit out.

He saluted jerkily and grinned: it was not a pleasant sight.

"Word on the street is there's a vampire newbie," he said eagerly: Reg ran the Dead Rights group known with tasteless irony as the Fresh Start Club and, once he'd got his teeth into a cause, would fight for it to the death (as proven by the fact that he already had) and beyond, it seemed.

"Reg, you've not even been _on_ the street tonight," Vimes sighed.

"Alright sir, as you like it:" He coughed, no mean feat for a zombie and not pleasant for anyone in the same room: it sounded like a tombstone being slid off its place and smelt of sulphur; "Word on the, er, _filing system_, ahem, says there's a - "

"She just left," Angua cut in.

Reg's face fell and, once it hit an ordinary expression, kept going for a bit.

"She's headed towards Salis Street" Vimes said helpfully. "You'll catch her if you run."

He brightened up again. "Right you are, sir!"

With a miraculous turn of speed and a sound like standing on a rat, he was gone into the night.

* * * * *

Nobby and Ann walked in silence most of the way but, evidence will show not for the first time, something was biting Ann, although this one was psychological rather than pathological.

"You didn't seem… surprised to see me back at the Watch House, Nobby."

"Not really."

"You don't wonder _why_ I was there?"

"To report a crime."

Nobby had annoying bordering on infuriating logical streaks in him from time to time. At the moment, it sounded like lack of drink: Nobby sober once was never forgotten and many to have experienced it were so discomforted they actually _bought him alcohol_ when they met him to eradicate the chance.

"You don't wonder what crime?"

"I work in the Watch," he said simply. "Easier'n askin's to be told anyhow."

"Oh…"

The sound of footsteps and argumentative joints rolled up behind them like grey thunder.

"Mornin', Reg," Nobby called, not turning around.

He _needs _a drink, Ann thought, turning to face the oncoming officer. He stopped in-front of her, stood up straight and smiled.

"Aren't you even out of breath?"

"Always, miss," he chuckled, beaming like a lighthouse.

A lighthouse with blacked up windows, said a second part of Ann.

"Oh…"

Reg produced a small card from the recesses of his battered breastplate and presented it to Ann with a staggered flourish. She read it slowly as the two watchmen exchanged greetings, a smile spreading across her face at the words in front of her:

_Undead Yes - Unperson No!_


	5. Chapter 5

"Usual deal, then?"

Vimes stood up so as to be able to see the speaker further than just the helmet peak which protruded over the edge and the manicured hand which reached onto the surface in vague imitation of casually leaning on the desk.

"How d'you mean?"

"The case, sir," Cheery sighed. "Catch the bast- perpetrator," she corrected herself, "before the Guild get to him?"

"Yep, and pray to some God somewhere that we win."

"Ah," she said with quiet admiration; "Not a fan of excessive punishment, sir?"

Vimes looked at her with perplexity. "Excessive I'm fine with: it's the barbaric, bloody-minded lack of imagination I can't abide with." Up to a point, he corrected himself, usually stopping short of actually laying a finger on them. Memories of Cable Street flashed into his mind.

He gripped his own empty fist to quell the Beast.

Nobby and Reg strolled into the watch-house, unconsciously exactly out-of step with each other: it was a bad habit, stepping in-time, an inconvenient humanoid instinct Vimes had drilled his men out of. It was good for marches, but there never were any these days; on the streets, stepping out-of-time made the relatively innocent easier about the presence of a couple o' coppers as, by repressing innate instinct, it made them somehow more human (or dwarf or troll, the list goes on) but made the exceptionally guilty (guilt in Ankh-Morpork was never black-and-white: it had always been several unique shades of black) who hadn't seen them hear what sounded like _many armed coppers_ and blow their cover to their subsequent embarrassment.

Nobby was a fairly universally approachable cop, to within a few yards, by merit of most species having the niggling feeling he might be one of theirs.

Reg wandered off back to the shadows from whence he came (the filing system: it's a tedious job but someone's got to do it so you may as well assign the one man at your disposal who can't die of boredom), humming cheerfully to himself. Nobby sidled up to the desk (that is not to say he moved sideways: for Nobby, sidling is merely a state of mind which can take place in any dimension, likely including time), also humming but in the more silent, less pleasant sense. Ignoring the fact he only came up to Cheery's chin, he looked sidelong at the desk as if to speak to Vimes's knees through the wood.

"Yer seen Fred around, sir?"

"No," Vimes said slowly, walking around the desk to look him in the eyes. It wasn't the kind of question Nobby would ask so conspiratorially. "What has and or have he and or you done?"

"Nuffin', sir!" he lied, but with the hurt conviction of one who genuinely believes it. He calmed back into a slouch, sniffed, and added to both of them "If either o' youse sees him, can you roll him in the vague direction of Phedre Road?"

"Why Phedre Road?"

"'S on me beat," he said simply.

"I know," Vimes said pointedly, "that's why I asked."

"Oi – " Nobby replied, stung but carefully adding " – Sir – I resemble that remark."

Vimes opened his mouth to correct him, but decided to let him slide. Nobby pulled what must have been a salute as it was too far into the conversation to be a greeting, swivelled (in a way only describable as something between falling over and sidling a half-turn on the spot) and walked out. As he left, Vimes saw his hand rise to the back-catalogue of half-smoked rollups behind his ear, where it paused a second before falling sadly. The door closed behind him with a thud.

"Ye Gods," Vimes muttered. "Something downright wierd's gotten…" he hesitated, "…_out of _Nobby."

"Seconded," mumbled cheery, raising a hand slowly.

* * * * *

Ann spent the morning, once more, on her appearance, but this time at opposing purposes.

She smiled as she scraped off the thick pink slurry with which she'd tried to hide herself, even when she kept clipping her hands on her teeth (which she refused to call fangs, no matter how stubbornly they insisted on living outside her mouth) as she scrubbed her chin. She'd never conform to vampire stereotypes – she was still herself, just paler and a little longer in the tooth, per sé.

The next meeting – her first with the Fresh Start Club – was this afternoon. The card had said it all in one tiny sentence: just because you're undead doesn't mean you have to stop living, in a purely figurative sense, as the physical sense is… debatable.

Taking her grandmother's Llamedosian umbrella, which let through less sunlight than a brick wall (heavyweight wasn't the word: if a Llamedosian feels the need for an umbrella, where rain-gauges measure in yards, they call two people: a blacksmith and a thatcher), she set of into the day, pointing the cumbersome portable roof at the sun defiantly as she headed, once more, for Pon's Bridge.

* * * * *

"OK, guys, we have a new member," Reg called, excitement bubbling in his voice; "Ann here's new to vampirism so let's see if we can't help her through this, eh?"

Ann sat, mentally blushing, between Reg and a second vampire. A further two, presumably married, sat a little further around (although the wife looked more powder-white than the other three vampires and her teeth didn't seem to fit), after a very tall pale man in a leather cape. The last occupant took quite an effort to focus on and, when the eye succeeded, looked like something out of a low-budget nightmare post-rehab: terrifyingly stereotypical but smiling pleasantly.

The husband vampire, a short, stocky man who seemed generally uncomfortable with himself, leaned towards her conversationally.

"You feeling alright s-" his wife jabbed him in the ribs, not taking her in-law type friendly eyes off Ann. He winced. "Since noticing zer change?" he continued, his voice suddenly burdened with a heavy Űberwaldean accent.

"Well," she responded meekly, "I have been feeling quite tired."

"O, zat's completely natrell," laughed his wife in a singsong voice; "zat's 'bat-lag' – getting used to vaking up tvelve hours out fvom ven you used to, zer body gets a little out-off-sync: staying up late into zer day like today von't be such a pvoblem vonce your natrell body-clock ve-adjusts itself: sink off it like staying up until midnight felt ven you vorked diurnally." She sat up triumphantly with the pride of someone who's just made her V-quota for the day. She extended a powdered-white hand to Ann. "Countess Notfaroute," she said as Ann took it gingerly; "tveasurer off ze Ankh-Morpork League off Tempevance." Her husband twirled a finger around one ear behind her back and made a motion akin to removing dentures. That explained where the castanets had been when she was speaking.

"The League of what, sorry?"

"Tempevance," The Countess said proudly, indicating a black ribbon pinned to her dress; the room's other two vampires also indicated the same ribbon on their clothing. "Not von dvop," the Countess explained, "off… zer b-vord. Liff not in vein!" She produced a card, Ann dared not think where from, and handed it to Ann. It bore an image of the black ribbon and the words "Not One Drop" on one side and an address and c-mail on the back.

What's the sudden need for business cards? Ann thought.

The "Countess" then took it upon herself to introduce the little man to her side.

"Zis is my husband Count Notfaroute,"

"Howd'youdo,"

She shook his hand timidly, despite his friendly aura. The vampire next to her, until now silent and almost motionless, also extended a hand.

"Claus von Bonk."

Ann froze. "Von sorry?"

"Bonk." The way he clipped the word made it sound like someone banging their head on a steel girder. He also spoke with an Űberwaldean accent, although a more "natrell" one and, by the sound of his name, a real one. He seemed a little twitchy, although quite pleasant; his hand seemed to tingle like snow in hers and she felt she could hear someone singing quietly as she shook it.

The caped man mumbled something akin to "Ixolite," and extended a thin, bony hand that looked like it had been designed for juggling watermelons.

The last resident, the Nightmare on the other side of 666 Elm Street, reached a gigantic hand across the room with minimal effort, despite the huge gap between him and Ann.

"Schleppel," it said in what wasn't a bellow nor a whisper but managed to be both and yet just a pleasant greeting _at the same time._

"And you know me," laughed Reg.

* * * * *

The old butchers' store in Ham Alley was cordoned off and occasional flashes of brilliant white light were spat out of a shattered first-floor window.

The whole scene was a mess: the only clear spaces were tabletops from which all the clutter in which had been resplendent was strewn across the floor.

"That's everything, sir," Cheery called, putting the iconograph back in its pouch.

"Good job an' all," grumbled a voice from within its recesses; "I'm out of brown ink."

"Well you shouldn't paint so much in sepia, then."

"Well if you gave me blue more than once a month maybe I'd have a choice!"

"Right," Vimes called, climbing the stairs to the apartment. "First port of call's to clean up around the window."

* * * * *

"Fred?"

"Nobby?"

"Why're we standing out here?"

Colon looked around. The sun had skulked off out of sight long ago and the air was less thick tonight; the cold this caused wasn't helped by the fact they were standing on the brink of the Shades. He shivered.

"Keepin' guard o' the crime scene," he hazarded.

"Why? I mean, it's already been burgled once."

"Yeah, but what's left's evidence, ain't it? An' _that_ makes it more important than what's already been nicked."

"Cor," Nobby muttered, "that's lucky."

Fred blinked a bit. "Why d'you say that?"

"'Cos imagine if the thief'd nicked some o' what 'e left instead o' what's not as important."

Colon pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. That'd be a bugger."

They stood in silence for a while, punctuated by industrious sounds from the upstairs room and the occasional interrupted scream from deeper into the Shades. Nobby shuffled his feet.

"Don't see why, though," he grumbled. "All the proper thieves head further in this time o' night."

"Yeah, but by putting you on guard, we immediately eliminate one possible thief."

"I could eliminate more'n that, sarge," Nobby grinned, lifting his Burleigh and Stronginthearm pistol crossbow to his eye level and blatantly missing the point.

Silence fell again, apart from the occasional sound of glass shattering.

"Fred?"

"Nobby?"

"Y'know our bet?"

Colon grinned evilly. "Yes, Nobby, I believe I do."

"How're you coping?"

"Absolutely fine," Colon smirked, rocking back and forth smugly. "An' it's probably harder for me 'cos I've got a permanent woman in me life."

"Yeah, but all you see from her's a packed lunch."

"'S not the point, though, is it?"

"Well, yes, she'd have to -"

"Anyway," Colon cut in, hastily, "how are _you_ coping? How long do you reckon you can go?"

"Not much longer, I'll admit," Nobby mumbled, looking at his feet.

Colon stared at him in disbelief. "Good _grief_, Nobby, it's been two days!" Colon laughed amiably. "We've barely begun!"

"Two days without what is considered a masculine necessity in most human cultures, bear in mind," Nobby mumbled edgily.

"Nobby, for one thing, I'm not sure you qualify and, for a second one, Omnians go completely without."

"What, completely?"

"Oh yes."

"Not even -"

"Nope."

Nobby stopped to think about this. "Cor," he said eventually. "Poor Washpot."

"Aye," Colon shivered again. "Best not to think about it."

"Seconded," Nobby mumbled quickly, raising the hand with the crossbow in for a second.

* * * * *

"None at all?"

"No, sir."

Vimes stood ponderously for a second, then jerked back to life suddenly.

"Reg?"

"Yessir?"

"Get the lock off the door to the apartment."

Reg didn't move but stood, perplexed and immobile.

"Sir?"

Vimes sighed. "Take the lock out of the door and bring it back to the station. Right?"

"Yessir." He wandered off, none the wiser, and began dismantling the door.

"Cheery, you done the inventory?"

"Yessir."

"Right." He looked around the room for inspiration. "Check the windowsill for footprints, I'll gather up the glass from outside, then we'll head back to the station."

"Shall I take the cordon down?"

"No," Vimes said slowly. "There's something odd about this. Keep it closed: we're not done here."


	6. Chapter 6

The Ankh-Morpork League of Temperance was based in what was probably once a not particularly appealing but nevertheless comfortably large building. Now it bore lavish decoration somewhere between the height of gothic décor and a cheap hotel, the sad product of a traditionalist Überwaldean vampire mind trying to be Human, for the given value of "Human" being "Petrifyingly Garish, Mind-Numbingly Tasteless and Overall Pointlessly Fluffy". It was like an inside-out Hogswatch tree, and the chromic clashing sight alone welded Ann's feet to the threshold.

Having got a grip of herself enough, she made it to the cheerily eerie desk on the other side of the room, swinging the umbrella charismatically by her side as she'd watched so many toffs do as they walked past her house.

Never the same toff twice, she noticed.

A thoroughly bored mass of black whorls of hair and white skin looked up, not apparently any better for the company. Ann opened her mouth to speak but the lump behind the desk beat her to it.

"Can I help zhou," she yawned in thickly drawled Überwaldean accent which thoroughly hoped the answer was no.

Ann drew herself up to her full five foot three and looked her dead in the eye, leaning the umbrella against the desk. The desk moved back a little. "I wish to sign up," she chimed haughtily.

"Zhou don't say?" She yawned, reclining further into the deep chair behind the desk. "I sought zhou vonted to oder a pizza, I mean, zat's zer reason most vampires come here, isn't it? Vot _voz_ I sinking," she continued in her dull, monotonous drawl, pulling out a heavy, leather-bound ledger from under the desk and dropping it heavily in-front of Ann with a lazy flourish. She opened it to the bookmark, revealing the last name on the list (or at least a page and a half of it) and pushed a pot of pens alongside it, with the look about it being that usually the signing-up used more than one potful.

"Nehm?"

"Sorry?"

"Zhour _nehm_," she repeated, whining over the normal monotonous drawl.

"Oh," Ann cleared her throat. "Miss Ann Yvonne Holm."

The pen didn't move. The little white face glared up at her.

"Are zhou mehking fun off my accent?"

"What?"

"Zhou're tvying to tell me zhour nehm is 'Is anyvone home'?"

"No!" Ann cried, taken aback, then rebounded on herself; "I mean… yes, but… _no_, MISS ANN YVONNE HOLM."

"Oh," the dull heap subsided. "I sought zhou vere mocking my accent."

"I gathered."

"I can do a diffvent von if it helps matters," she said hopefully.

"Like what,"

"Wheyl," she smirked hopefully, "ah cun do theiys whun awraht," it drawled thickly.

Ann squinted at her. "Was that Genuan?"

"No, it vos just a put-on," she retorted, back in her original, slimy Überwaldean drone.

"Ha," Ann paused for a carefully calculated duration, clapped, and continued "Ha."

The receptionist shrugged. "Do zhou spell Annie viz a Vai oh an Ai-Ee?"

"What?"

"Annie, zhou know, zhour _nehm_, _Annie_ von Holm?"

"NO!" Ann flexed some frustration out of her muscles, "Ann! Ann _Yvonne_!"

"Zhou don't have a title _or_ a 'von'?" She was trying to look like she was trying to conceal a smirk without actually going so far as to actually conceal it.

"I _do_ have a von, it's just in the wrong place. Why-von-En-Ee."

"And Holm?" the smirk was still there, kept as visible as was possible as she looked down at the ledger, Ann noticed.

"Aitch-Oh-Ell-Em," Ann spat.

The other vampire looked up again. "Vot kind off a nehm is that?"

"A No Thingfjordean one, OK?" Ann was nearly yelling now and worrying that at any moment she was going to start a fight she couldn't win. Thankfully, the girl at the desk just finished the name with another lazy flourish, slammed the ledger with a shower of dust and, inexplicably, brightened up, folding her hands onto the desk where the ledger had been.

"Sorry about zat," she began, in a much lighter accent, with friendly modulation creeping into her voice now and startling Ann. The smirk had been beaten out of the way by a bright, positively altruistic smile. "Zer 'useless veceptionist voutine' helps to encourage abandoning violence in pvospective members, a common chavactevistic tvait off 'b-vord suckers'," she said, framing the words with her fingers as she did so, "vich vee tvy to iron out, by making zem tvy harder to qvell ze urge to vip out my sroat viz zeir teess."

"Does it work?"

"Not enough," the receptionist grumbled, rubbing her neck.

"Question?"

"Yes?"

"Does Countess Notfaroute come to you for voice training?"

The receptionist sagged. "It shows, does it?"

"Yep."

The other vampire sighed. "It's a tevible imitation to Überwaldeans, but I sought it had got to zer stage vere it could fool foveigners by now."

"Not yet."

"Oh, vell," she conceded. She looked up again. "My turn: qvestion?"

"Yes?"

"Is your name veally, _genuinely_, Ann Yv–"

"YES!"

"You poor sing."

"Thank you," Ann mumbled.

"Anyhow," the receptionist continued brightly, extending a bone-white hand across the desk; "velcome to zer Ankh Morpork League of Temperance." She slotted each syllable in with the grandeur of a gilded palace and the warmth of the same palace being burned to the ground. Undeniably warm – but not in as good a way as probably intended, in a sort of "You'll be made to feel very welcome, forever... until you die and not before" kind of way.

"Thank you," Ann repeated, shaking her hand. _What have I got myself into?_ She thought.

As if reading her mind, the receptionist continued "Here, ve hope to vehabilitete vampires into humans – no more b-vord or sadistic killing for life!"

"Thank you," Ann mumbled, repeating on autopilot: she'd never even considered touching blood. Since moving into Ham Alley, she hadn't considered touching meat for fear it might not be what it said on the tin and, increasingly, that it might be _exactly_ what it said on the tin. But something in that statement re-tripped her mind.

"Is there any way to _literally_ turn vampires into humans?"

"No idea," she said simply. She saw Ann sag a little, and felt more was needed from her. "It's a magical altevation to zer normal vorkings, so zer best people to ask might be zer vizards – hold on…" She patted her laced black dress in search for something and Ann began to brighten up – maybe there was still a chance of normality? Then the receptionist handed over the quarry of the search.

A business card.

+ + + Ponder Stibbons: Practical magic where needed + + +

+ + + Unseen University HEM Building, Ankh Morpork + + +

+ + + Stibbons(at) UU (dot) AM+ + +

"... Thank you..."

"Vell," the receptionist smiled, clapping her hands together conclusively, "Ve hope to see you avound, neh?" They shook hands again and Ann began to leave, glaring at the piece of card as if willing it to become a pamphlet.

As she approached the doorway, the receptionist's eye was caught by a glint in the corner of her eye, cast as light glanced off the reinforced handle of what looked like an umbrella on steroids balanced against the desk. It had already made a fairly deep indent in the wood.

"Er, excuse me? Is zis your-" _Vwumph! _"Oh..."

* * * * *

"What've you got off the lock?"

"Picked," Cheery said simply, not even looking up at her commander. "Sophisticated tools by the looks of it but fumbled a bit."

"How can you tell that much from a lock?"

Cheery's face as she looked up was the epitome of the infamous "You wouldn't understand". Vimes knew better than to disagree with it.

"So good equipment, bad user?"

"No, he knew what he was doing, it just looks like he was struggling. No idea why."

Angua appeared in the doorway behind Vimes, hair sticking out at all angles from under her helmet.

"Can't get anything over Ann's, sir." She was swaying uneasily and hanging from one side of the doorframe. "Anger, fear, confusion, multiply all that by vampire and enclosed space and you've got a total whitewash. All trace of the perp gone."

Vimes cursed inwardly: if anything could get past Angua's nose, it could get past anything. Just by robbing a vampire he may as well have dropped an aniseed bomb in the room.

"Nothing from the window?"

"In Ham Alley?" This was a good point: Ham Alley was right on the river end of the Shades and if you could smell even Nobby Nobbs over the Ankh from there in hot weather, you were lucky. And I mean that word with utmost sincerity. "There's Ann and there's Ankh. Sorry. I'll just go and..." she staggered off in search of a lie down, head throbbing mercilessly.

"Thanks," Vimes called to her retreating figure. He collared Reg as he passed.

"Keep Sally away from Angua for a few hours, OK?" He shoved him on his way, or at least what was now his way, vis, the one he had been shoved in, made a few vague "Keep up the good work" gestures to Cheery and left.

* * * * *

Ann looked at the pile of dust and clothes at her feet with detached annoyance. The medicine bottle of Angua's blood lay intact on the surface, cushioned by landing on the crumples of her blouse. She moved to stamp on it but her foot met no resistance.

I'M AFRAID YOUR BAGGAGE IS ON ANOTHER PLANE. THE, ER, PHYSICAL ONE.

Ann turned to see the speaker, to stretch the term to breaking point. A tall, caped man, his face and hands entirely shadowed by a black, hooded cloak, stood in the doorway of the League headquarters, leaning heavily on a curved staff. Ann looked down at herself quickly and relaxed on finding her shade fully-clothed.

"Who are you and how can you see me?"

The figure shifted its weight slightly and the staff turned, revealing the curved scythe-blade which had been perfectly hidden behind it and dislodging a black sleeve from a skeletal hand. Two specks of blue light emerged within the hood, illuminating a skull in their cold glow.

"... Ah."

NO DOUBT MISS VON COLLIP WILL BE OUT HERE SHORTLY WITH YOUR UMBRELLA -

"Parasol."

- CURRENTLY, BY SOLE ALTERATION OF USAGE, TRANSMUTED INTO A PARASOL, THANKS TO THE ONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE HUMAN MIND -

"What?"

Death sighed, or, at the very least, produced the sound a building makes just before it collapses in on itself and its inhabitants. It was not one which begged recollection.

YOU USE IT TO BLOCK THE SUN, THEREFORE IT IS BEING USED AS A PARASOL, THEREFORE, IN YOUR MIND, IT IS A PARASOL, TAKING ON THE ESSENCE NOT OF ITS DESIGNED PURPOSE FOR WHICH THE... ARCHITECT INTENDED IT BUT FOR ITS CURRENT PURPOSE. THEREFORE, IT IS WHAT IT DOES BUT DOES NOT NECESSARILY DO WHAT IT IS.

"... Oh..."

... A DUSTPAN AND A SMALL MALLET FOR THE VIAL.

"I've never heard of Collip before."

HER FAMILY CHANGED THEIR NAME A HUNDRED YEARS AGO OR SO.

"_To_ von Collip?"

YES. IT PREVENTS THE MORE STEREOTYPICALLY-MINDED TRYING TO HIDE IN ANONYMITY BEHIND THEIR OWN NAME SPELLED BACKWARDS.

Ann thought this through for a second. "Ah."

Miss von Collip walked around Death under Ann's parasol, née umbrella, seemingly ignorant of his existence, through Ann's shade and swept the pile into a small dustpan, hanging the clothes over her arm. Through Ann and around Death, she walked back into the building.

"Why are you here?"

BECAUSE A VAMPIRE WALKED OUT INTO THE SUN WITHOUT PROTECTION AND, TECHNICALLY, DIED, he said with some annoyance. A strange trick of the light made it look as if he raised a skeletal eyebrow at her.

Trick of the light... yeah... must've been...

"Oh... sorry... then why didn't you last time?"

I DID.

"But-"

AND THEN YOU REMATERIALISED AND YOUR MIND TOLD YOUR BRAIN WHAT IT HAD SEEN AND YOUR BRAIN SAID, PULL THE OTHER ONE, IT HAS GOT BELLS ON, AND NEITHER ONE EVER SPOKE OF IY AGAIN.

"Oh. So I won't remember this time either?"

NOT A CHANCE. IN THREE SECONDS, IT'LL BE GONE FOREVER.

"Oh. Wait - how long did y- " _Schphwup!_


	7. Chapter 7

Even through the curtains, the sunlight was a nuisance. Ann figured the better idea would be to wait until nightfall to see this "Stibbons". Until then, she would do just what the card said.

She pondered the difference between normal magic and practical magic.

She pondered over the kind of mind that would send out business cards for a wizard.

She pondered the strange prefixation and suffixation of plusses.

She pondered the very use of the word "ponder" over the more applicable "consider".

But, most of all, she pondered the strange substitution of punctuation in Stibbons's c-mail address.

She snapped back into the real world with a jolt, as there came a knock on the door. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they knock. This knock sounded like the percussive equivalent of someone clearing his throat without actually wanting to be heard. This knock told the listener of unsuccessful secrecy, of reluctance, against the odds, to stand out. But, most of all, it told the keen listener that, whoever was knocking, they could only reach three feet up the door to do so.

Ann sighed. "Come in, Nobby."

He pushed the door ajar, sidled in with his helmet under one matchstick arm and closed it behind him. This was barely necessary, as he could probably just as easily have slid under the closed door and would probably have done so with more dignity.

"Hullo, Ann."

"Hullo, Cecil." He winced, but let it slide.

"You weren't at Society yesterday," he noted calmly.

_Shit..._ "No, sorry, things have been a bit... weird lately." Ann was part of the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Nowadays, in the changing culture, this bore with it the negative social stigma of being associated with a Morris dancer. The Morris dancer in question was Nobby Nobbs.

"Only we've started on the Dolly Sisters Stick Dance and could do with someone who can play a quick jig."

"Why don't you?"

"I do but, the Dollies Stick Dance, the music's a bit like a thingy race, y'know with the stick."

"Relay?"

"Aye, you take over when the other one breaks a finger." He frowned a little in recollection. "I used to like relays. Got thrown out of the team on Elm Street."

"How come?"

"Kept running off with the stick."

"Baton."

"Sconner always told me not to play wi' me food."

Ann gave up.

Nobby was still standing in the doorway and Ann kept her distance, not just to put as much distance as possible between her and Nobby but also so they could see one another: she wasn't particularly tall herself but still had difficulty seeing people below a certain height close-up. Nobby shifted uneasily without actually moving and then looked up.

"Oh, yeah, that's why I come: I'm here to inform you on progress o' catchin' the burglar."

"Oh, good." There was a long silence. "Yes?"

"That just about covers it."

"Oh." She decided to look on the bright side: that meant she was "stuck" in this place, with its comfortable furniture and the curtains which painted the room in warm orange and the salamander reading light that glowed brighter when you tapped it until the poor sod knocked itself out and you had to start all over again. On the other hand, all her worldly possessions were in a box labelled "EVIDENCE".

"Cheers, Nobby." He saluted half-heartedly and sidled out.

The deep orange now oozing through the curtains indicated that the sun was just descending the far side of Cori Celeste. A tentative tug at one's edge revealed the blue of a waiting twilight lingering on the rim. A curious quirk of the Disc's residual magic field was its effect on light, similar to that of roadworks on commuters, slowing it to six hundred miles an hour. This meant that you could watch the day and the night spread from your point of view across the Disc to wherever it was going, like a wave flooding entire civilisations (at _three_ hundred perceived miles an hour) but could still never see it coming, as the sight of the sun lighting up the rim on its ascent reached you at the same time as that taking a direct route to you. Mathematicians have gone mad standing on the rim halfway between its rising and setting and watching dawn rise but paintings of its passage still delight (because an artist cannot go mad in the same way as the sea cannot turn blue).

She lay back on the bed and tapped the light once, causing a dim, pale glow to thin the almost tangible scarlet-orange.

There came another knock, but thinner and sustained, like tapping on glass. Sure enough, a dark void in one curtain silhouetted a figure, hanging by one arm from the guttering. She ran to it, thinking it the victim of a fall but, on hurling back the curtain, was greeted by the vampire from the Fresh Start Club, smiling amiably and hanging effortlessly by the fingertips of one hand. He waved with the other.

Ann flung the window open, glad that it opened inwards. "Hello again," he said.

"Claus!"

"Vell vemembered. Can I comm in?"

"I think you'd best." She stepped aside as he swung in with no apparent propulsion, flipped over in the air and landed facing her.

She hadn't really taken much notice of him at the Club: he'd been quiet, unassuming although quite twitchy. Now, he stood bold as brass in black smart-casual, his hair combed into a smart parting which almost eliminated the appearance of his widow's peak. In the reddened light, he looked almost human, but for the sharp cheekbones and sharper teeth, which glimmered as he grinned at her. Under his kind, pale eyes, Ann became glad of her newfound inability to blush.

"How did you get there?"

"Along zer rooftops. It's a necessary skill in my line of work." He took out a small wallet gingerly and opened it to reveal a licence, in his name, to the Assassins' Guild. He folded it up and dropped it back in a pocket. Ann knew better than to protest: the guild was a long-established, well meaning and... well, gentlemanly institution, which performed necessary civil cleanup duties in exchange for substantial donations. It also provided an excellent education, even if you had no intent of being anyone's dying vision.

"But there's no way up to the rooftops here - this whole block has no skylights or anything. I'm assuming, here," she laughed, "that you didn't start scaling the wall in broad daylight, so how did you get onto the roof in the first place.

He looked at her with dejected confusion and said, simply, "I flew."

Ann let her mouth open slowly, then clapped it shut with a disturbing _click._

"You can fly?" she mumbled.

He grinned, drawing attention to his overgrown canines. "Ve. First person plural." In the reddened light, with both of them lit in pastel shades of flesh, she'd completely forgotten. Something about Claus made her glad of it, eager to explore its possibilities, her will to be human depleted.

"How?" she couldn't help the eagerness leaking out in her voice as the smile spread across her face. He grinned conspiratorially, hopped across the room and turned the key in her lock before returning in another hop, took her hands...

And looked deep into her eyes.

There was a flash...

And what felt like a huge sneeze. She could see a dim silhouette of the world fifty times over, each image through every other, overlapping and bouncing hurriedly. She became aware of the sensation of flapping her arms, too many to count, all independently. It began to dawn on her...

She was _bats_. Completely and utterly _bats_.

Some of her looked down at the pile of clothes under her.

"Yes, for some veason zat's not a pvoblem for male vampires..." The words didn't exactly sound, they just... happened. They hadn't been said and, then, they had. She focused up again and saw a single bat fluttering calmly a few feet away. It didn't have a fabric shadow. "Tell me, Ann," Claus continued, fluttering into her cloud of bats; "haff you ever seen zer city fvom above?"

"No but... how come you're one bat and I'm so many?"

"Pvactice. I'll keep you togezer."

Without any more words, they were gone from the window.

* * * * *

They were climbing quickly, shooting through moonlit clouds that gathered high over the city, the Isle of Gods shrinking behind them.

"You were born in Überwald, weren't you?" It was a fain attempt at small-talk, and there's not much other kinds of talk you can make at fifty times four inches long.

"Yes, in Bonk." The way he pronounced it still fascinated Ann.

"Were you an assassin before you came here?"

"Oh, no," he laughed. "I vos a blues singer in a Vampire bar in Genua for a long time."

"Vampire... _blues_?"

"Oh yes, like depvessing jazz, I don't know if it's caught on over here, it's easily identified: all zer songs seem to all start viz "Ve-ll ai voke up zis evenin', la la la la la..." and zen improvise fvom zere on in and hope no-one notices it doesn't make any sense." They laughed together for a while, then he sighed.

From above, the city sprawl was almost elegant: by day, it hummed but now, by night, it shone; roofs blocked out the putrid vision of the shades and the Ankh's tectonic flow actually seemed to glisten in the moonlight; even below the peak of the Tower of Art, the compressed streets, many still lit by the archetypal insomniac city life, dwindled into insignificance behind the Patrician's Palace, the Temple of Small Gods, the Dysk Theatre, the University, and all this dwindled into insignificance behind the fact Ann was _flying_.

"Vot can you see?"

"Barely anything."

Claus chuckled. "Now, vot can you _hear_?"

Ann opened her ears and let the nocturnal bustle, the laughter, the Dysk's play and the Opera, the dogs and the Gods. There were only two words for it:

"Ankh-Morpork."

* * * * *

The sun was considering its ascent as they flittered back in through the window. Stibbons would have to wait a day but, right now, Ann didn't care. Claus changed, clothes and all, and drew the curtain. Ann hung all over the ceiling beam.

"Do you know how to change back?"

"Is it the opposite of the first change?"

"Yes."

"Then yes. But I'd rather you weren't here when I do so."

"Vai?"

"Because," she said slowly, "my clothes are all in a pile on the floor."

"Ah." He made for the window, changing into a bat again mid-step.

"Claus?"

He hovered by the window, turning his head do her.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure," he laughed and vanished into the dawn.

Ann pulled herself together, pulled the curtains shut again and flopped onto the bed, clothing matters forgotten. She wondered why she hadn't noticed him at the club - this beautiful personality. Now she'd met him, _really_ met him, they'd just clicked so easily. And he'd held her eyes - not many men could do that. Alright, so he was an assassin but Ann was a guild member. Admittedly, the Musicians' Guild was a different kettle of fish - an extortionate, heartless institution to free emotion but, at least it wasn't her footing the membership fee. But the assassins were... more polite. It had been the last remark of many a client (or was the client the one who hired them?), or at least the ones who got to notice, how delicately they acted, why, I never even heard you coming, my word, my compliments to...

And he'd flown up to see _her_, in daylight, no less, but still had the decency to turn up _in person_, so as to speak. It made her feel... privileged. The opportunity of a _second _date with an assassin - _no, it _wasn't_ a date, it was just_..._ a friendly meeting - oh, alright, then, a _first _date with an assassin_... _not much of a privilege, that_...

With her mind tossing and turning on the pink, fluffy seas of a warm feeling she told herself wasn't there, she drifted off to sleep on her quilt.


	8. Chapter 8

The High Energy Magic building sat a little way away from the main building and anyone without prior knowledge would think it a different establishment: the main building's ornate grandeur has been replaced by functional sterility and, in place of the hulking University's turrets and spires, it sported two large, metal balls.

Ann stood by a door marked "Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic," wondering how many realities knocking on it would result in fusing and exploding. The title didn't seem to reflect the "Practical" clause on the card.

She knocked anyway.

A rustle and rumble of a lot of things falling over at once sounded through the door, followed by a stream of counterproductively polite expletives, the kind that make "Damn!" look hardcore.

"Is that Mr. Stibbons?"

"Er, yes - er, that is... _yes_, it _is_, but, er, oh dear..."

"Can I come- "

"No! Er, no, not just now, oh botherbotherbother..."

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not er... decent."

Ann blinked a bit. She knew about wizards, and had no wish to imagine one "not er... decent".

"... Oh... alright..."

He carried on cussing the air an embarrassed shade of pink. "Oh, _confounded_, where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"My _hat_!"

Something clicked in Ann's mind. "Hold on, hold on, other than your hat, are you decent?"

There was a shocked silence. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, other than- "

"What kind of a question's that?"

"What?"

"If you were, er... if you had no... if you weren't..."

"Yes?"

"And, and, and _I _said, other than, than, than your _clothes_, you know, are are you _clothed_?"

Ann sighed. "Is your hat all you're missing?"

"Well," he snapped righteously, "I suppose you could say that, yes."

"I've seen hair before."

"_What_?" he was nearly screaming now. "It's not a matter of what's _there_, it's what's _not_! It's just... _not done_ for a wizard to show his uncovered lack of hat in public!"

Ann sighed. "Alright, go find your hat."

"_Thank you._" After a few minutes of rummaging noises, the door opened a crack.

Around it poked a round face, windowed by rounder glasses. It was a much younger face than she had expected, probably even younger than her. It had a pointy hat on.

Or, alternatively, had no visible sign of _lack of _hat. There was probably no way he could have helped his un-wizardly lack of facial hair.

Ann showed him the card. "Is this you?"

He looked at it critically, then sighed. "Yes and no."

"Sorry?"

"Yes, I am Ponder Stibbons." Ponder's _his name_? thought Ann. Some people should just never have children. Ponder appeared to have inherited that from his parents.

"But?" She hazarded, trying hard not to smirk, for the most part successfully.

"_But_, I don't advertise myself with business cards or the like."

"You appear to be the only one in this city," Ann mused.

"Yes, I noticed that, too..." He looked at the card again and handed it back to her, stepping out of the office and closing the door behind him. "Follow me, please."

Ann followed him back through the building to a large room, full of contraptions and desks covered in periphernalea (things which look like random junk out of the corner of your eye but, should you look closer, turn corkscrews through your brain). She wandered over to one such desk which had, in the middle, a cylindrical ring. Or two. Or one-and-a-half. It was hard to tell. It seemed to glow, but only in that different parts of it were lit from different angles, despite a complete lack of lighting. It cast a shadow away from the nearest candle. And a few away from it...

"What's this?"

"A Didactylos Ring," Ponder explained, twiddling his cuffs. "If you were to put an ant on it so that it followed the contours of the face it was on without crossing any edges, given enough time, it would meet itself coming the other way. On the inside."

"... Right..."

"Alternatively, if you were to try to draw a line along one face in the same way, thirty-five percent of people go mad _before_ they run out of pencils." He twiddled nervously with a cuff. "Within it, therefore, pi equals exactly infinity. For the most part. Or zero. Or minus six."

"That's silly," Ann said, shaking her head. "Pi's three point etcetera. That's what pi _is_. You can't change it."

"Would you like a pencil?"

Ann thought again. "No, thanks. Minus six? Hm, yes... OK... What's it made of?"

Ponder hesitated. "The current theory is shadows."

"Of what?"

"Itself."

"... OK..." She moved along quickly. What had, out of the corner of her eye, been a grotesque vase, drew her attention. As she looked, a multitude of spatial dimensions shuffled for precedence. It looked like the product of the Glass-Blowers' Hallucinogenics Society - pipes from inside it went through its sides, other pipes, even themselves and, when focusing on one bit, the other was just a background blur: no two points could be seen in such a way as to make sense at the same time, so, when one was, the rest became a jumble of knitted fog.

"And... that? Or those?"

"_That_," Ponder said pointedly, "Is a von Kurze bottle. It has no inside or outside."

"Then what does it have?"

"A side."

"Ah." She looked down into the main inlet: she could see the tube from it disappear around a bend. Ponder seemed a little more excited.

"Can I show you something?" he said. Ann shrugged and he disappeared, scuttling back with the weight of a full pail on each arm. Each one could easily have held the bottle. He put one down and two-handedly emptied the other into the bottle. Ann watched the last trickle run down the pipe and around the bend. She watched wide-eyed as he did the same with the second pail.

"Here's the best bit:" he picked it up by one of the semi-insubstantial pipes and shook it. There was no sound of sloshing. She could see him through it and there was definitely nothing in it (although the Ponder she could see through it _was_ wearing a pin-stripe blue suit). He then picked up a tiny bottle of blue dye, took one drop on a little metal rod and dropped it pointedly into the hole.

The whole bottle went blue.

"It has a total internal capacity of X divided by zero."

"Where X is?"

"Y divided by zero."

"And Y?"

"Y not."

"... Oh." Time to move along again, that's it, keep you sanity on its toes, _stop talking to yourself or it'll all end in tears!_

She came to a transparent disc a little larger than her hand, perfectly round and even more perfectly flat. She could only tell it was there because the light passing through it got confused, not knowing whether it was meant to stop or not.

"What's the disc?"

"It's not a disc, it's a ball."

"I think we're looking at different things."

"It's a perfect eight by eight by eight sphere."

"We're looking at different things," she repeated, more forcibly.

"I didn't say where the eight _were_."

"... Eh?"

"Eight inches by eight inches by eight _seconds_, with a temporal circumference-duration ratio of pi, therefore it has three dimensions the diameters of which are each one pi... _eth_...of their circumferences." Ann looked blank. "Sphere," he explained, simply.

"... Why?"

"It's a monopod iconograph stand. It has one leg, eight seconds long."

"How does that help?"

"Because _every instant_, whatever it's supporting was supported eight seconds ago, so it can't fall because, in eight seconds, it will have been being supported, even if it isn't _yet_."

"_Right_..." No wonder they say the bursar here's gone... well, bursar, Ann thought. A normal-looking contraption beckoned her to its mundane realism.

It was a wooden box. It was undeniably box-shaped. And wooden. It had four enamelled dials arranged so that a small section of each, currently showing the number zero, was showing through a rectangular hole. A piece of wood with a colon on it had been slotted in the middle of the four zeroes. Beneath the number-hole were five buttons, bearing the digits "+5s", "+15s", "+1m", "Cancel" and "Start" and, beneath them, a larger button. The larger button looked attached to what made up the rest of the front of the box: a door, most of which was a thick glass window with metal strands running through it, cutting the view through into squares: on the inside, a round, lead plate sat in the middle.

"What's that, then?"

"Ah," Ponder shuffled proudly; "I call it the macrothaum oven. Not tested yet, mind," he added.

"What does it do?"

He pointed to the panel bearing the dials and buttons. "You use these to set the clockwork for however long you want it to run, this," he pointed to the "Cancel" button, "resets it all to zero. When you press this," he pointed to the "Start" button, "it compresses a polarised sample of octiron which produces raw, heat-causing thaumic energy into _here_," he pointed to the door. "It also turns that plate in the middle."

"You lost me at 'zero'," Ann sighed. Ponder ignored her in his self-righteous technobabble.

"The inside is coated with thaumoluminescent resin so that it lights up when you turn it on."

"Why?"

Ponder paused. "... I don't actually know. It just seemed like an idea at the time." He recovered into the rant. "The wire in the window is negatively-polarised octiron to stop any thaums getting out and turning you into a candle." This didn't fill Ann with confidence. "The pressure build-up you'd expect around the octiron thaum-source is vented into an air resevoir which is vented out of the oven through this hole," he pointed to a thin slit near the top, "in three short bursts when the cycle's finished and pressure removed from the thaum-source. This also acts as an alarm to tell you it's hit zero."

"Why?"

He paused again. "So you can get out whatever you were cooking when it's done."

"But if you were looking in, which the glowing inside implies," she said slowly, "won't you know anyway because it stops glowing?"

Ponder opened and shut his mouth a few times. "I don't actually know. It just..."

"Seemed like an idea at the time?"

"Exactly."

"Odd when that happens." A lot of things seem like good ideas at, say, three in the morning after enough alcohol to sink a penguin. It doesn't mean you do them again whilst sober. "Why did you bring me down here?"

Ponder looked ponderous for a second. It suited him. "Oh, yes," he said, and strode quickly over to the other side of the room, where an amalgam of odds and almost complete lack of ends came together into a machine which, once noticed, dominated the room.

"Hex!" Ponder shouted at it. A quill lowered itself onto a sheet of paper in the tray and wrote,

+ + + Yes, Mr. Stibbons? + + +

"Have you been sending out business cards in my name?"

+ + + Yes. + + +

"Why?"

+ + + To Alleviate Some Of The Boredom From Your Dull Life By Bringing A Little Interest Into Your Work. + + +

"... Oh."

+ + + You're Welcome. + + +

Ann caught up with the little wizard and addressed the machine. "Why have you written 'at'as the _word_ at in brackets?" She asked. "Can't you do the symbol 'at'?"

+ + + I Can But, As I Was Distributing The Cards Through The Clacks System, Writing My Own C-Mail Address On The Cards Would Have Bounced Them Straight Back To Me, Which Would Be A Waste Of Time And Effort, So I Relied Upon Humans Being Able To Work That Bit Out For Themselves. + + +

"... Oh."

+ + + You're Welcome. + + +

Ponder turned from the readouts exasperatedly. "Sorry about that. Why was it you wanted to see me?"

_Now_ we get to the point. She opened her mouth to ask the question...

And remembered the city from above. The bustle, the nocturnal excitement, the beauty a changed perspective can bring to even Ankh-Morpork; the twinkle of the city lights, the palace from above, the moonlight dancing on the circle sea...

_The beauty a changed perspective can bring..._

She became aware she was being spoken to in text and saw the words Catch Flies? + + + out of the corner of her eye.

"Er, no, sorry, erm..." she began to back away slowly. "I er... don't know... I..." She ran out, her head spinning; what am I doing? she thought; I've been looking for this for a week and _they might be able to help!_ And I'm running away from it, _I'm running away from myself!_ From being human! She flung open the door.

Ponder winced as the sunlight flowed in and blinded his dark-accustomed eyes. He sighed. The quill next to him scrawled on the page.

+ + + You'll Have To Go: I Bleed Ants, Which Would Not Help Matters. + + +

"Thanks for that."

+ + + You're Welcome. + + +


	9. Chapter 9

Above the old Ham Alley butchery (or below it, depending on which franchise you considered the butchery), Ann's window looked out just above the plaque with the old motto, "NIL QVID SED QVIS" still engraved deep into the stone. Vimes's eyes were currently drawn to the long, metal rivets between the D and S which once held a red-and-white pole and the dual crest of the barber and butcher, now stolen and likely sold for scrap. The iron rivets were still solid, though, left on the principle that some things nailed down aren't even worth trying to steal, a surprisingly uncommon philosophy in Morpork. They stuck out right under the window.

Perfect handholds? No, they'd rusted to wire-thin lumps of red bubble, they wouldn't hold a kleptomanic sparrow. But, something still bothered him about them.

"Sergeant Littlebottom?"

"Sir?"

Vimes pointed to the window below Ann's, identical but for clearance, in both the legal and vertical senses. "I'm going to jump out of that window."

"It's not that bad, sir, honest!"

"I want you to get an iconograph of my fall," he continued, ignoring her. "In particular, when I'm..." he made a quick estimate, "when I'm a foot and a half below the windowsill." He walked into the house without another word, leaving Cheery baffled, but, obediently, unpacking the iconograph. She stood side-on to the window and waited for the window to open.

It didn't. Well, not exactly...

In an explosion of glass and wood, Vimes burst through the window hands first and rolled in the cascade of fragments, one hand in his helmet to steady himself without cutting his hand open, turned and calmly raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry, sir, it didn't flash." She held up the salamander box, in which the lizard was fast asleep.

Vimes hit himself on the forehead with the helmed hand. Cheery quickly looked for any good news before he went spare, as her colleagues so astutely simplified it.

"Hold on, hold on," she tapped the box urgently. "Can you put this one through with better contrast?"

The world's tiniest sigh of annoyance radiated from the box. "If you can give me some light to work by."

"If I point you at the moon?"

"What phase?"

"Waning gibbous do you?"

"Should be enough; go on, then." She fed the slide back through the slot and listened to the rapid, careful brushstrokes from inside. It came back out, clear as day.

"Thanks," she said hurriedly and handed it to Vimes. He looked from it, to the upper window, then back. Then repeated. He held it so Cheery could see, too.

"Now, I took a run-up, which our burglar can't have. I'll admit, I'm not as fit as I was but, the run-up will have cancelled most of that out. Bearing that in mind, look at my toes." Cheery looked down. "In the iconograph, sergeant." She looked back up sheepishly. His head and arms were already out of the frame but his feet were perfectly in focus.

"They're a foot and a half below the windowsill, sir."

"I know, as requested, but that's not why I ask." He pointed at two points on the wall using his index and middle fingers - the windowsill and the level of his feet. "If that's a foot and a half," he shifted so one finger was now at his toes and the other level on the wall, "what do you reckon that is?"

Cheery looked for a second, tilting her head forty-five degrees to one side. "About a foot, sir."

Vimes nodded and handed her the iconograph. He pointed up to the rivets. "How long do you reckon they are?"

Cheery craned her neck up, gave up and disappeared into the house, reappearing at the broken bedroom window.

"About a foot and a half, sir," she called down.

"So he can't have jumped out; he'd've hit the rivets and they'd've snapped."

Cheery was half impressed and half annoyed she hadn't noticed this. "Must've gone up from here?" she suggested.

"He'd have cut himself or his clothes on the glass at the top of the frame if he tried." Some vicious glass teeth still clung ominously to the top of the frame, blatantly devoid of blood or fragments of cloth.

"Climbed down?"

"Without breaking the rivets?"

Cheery looked for another way around it. There was none. There was up, down or _very _down and all three had been ruled out. She smiled in sudden realisation. "The window was a decoy! He left through the door he came in by!"

"The key was in the lock on the inside: Miss Holm specifically remembered that. That would have made it impossible to lock behind him."

Cheery sagged into thought. "One of the other windows?"

"Locked from the inside."

Cheery disappeared from view, re-appearing at the door. "OK, sir, I give in. How'd he do it?"

Vimes looked thoughtful for a minute, then smiled grimly. "He didn't."

"Sir?"

"He was still there when she woke up," he announced, triumphantly. "He hid and waited for her to leave for the police station, then left through the door."

"So we're looking for anywhere someone could hide?"

Vimes's face fell back to normal as the sergeant ignored his victory. "Yeah, I suppose so," he sighed.

"I'll get Igor," Cheery announced, calmly. "He's good with hiding-places and inconspicuity, if that's the word."

"You brought me with you, thergeant," a voice inches from her ear stated.

Cheery's face froze. "Constable if you do that again I'll staple you to the floor _understood_?" she said in one sudden, unpunctuated breath.

"Thorry, tharge. Inthtinctth, you thee." He wiped his mouth with a sleeve and looked up. "Odd motto for a butcher. Or a barber, for that."

"I believe it refers to the pies," Vimes explained.

Cheery's mouth moved a little as she translated. "That's disgusting."

"Hm, barberic," Vimes agreed before he could stop himself.

"That was poor taste, sir."

"No, that was a bad joke. The _pies_ were poor taste."

"Actually, it'th quite nithe with thumb theathoning." Two heads swivelled slowly to look at him. "I'm told..."

"Thumb seasoning?" Cheery inquired. "Is that what I -"

"_Thumb_ theathoning. You know, a bit of?"

"Ah. Some seasoning, eh?"

"That'th what I thaid." They looked up again.

Some of the greatest minds in Ankh-Morpork lost more than stubble here," Vimes sighed.

"What a wathte."

"Yeah, I doubt we'll see the like again."

"Er, I believe we are thpeaking at croth-purpotheth, thur." He let it sink in.

"_That_," Vimes said, slowly, "was poor taste."


End file.
